Research methodology
Our research included visits to several plants of different types and sizes, conversations with fleet monitoring and diagnostic managers, round-robin discussions during a plant managers’ workshop at the ELECTRIC POWER 2007 Conference & Exhibition, ad hoc discussions with attendees of a recent HRSG Users’ Group meeting, and telephone interviews. To the extent possible, we asked plant and fleet managers and staff similar questions.
It is often insightful, though perilous, to draw big conclusions from small data sets. Nevertheless, they are offered here in the spirit of facilitating an industry-level discussion on this critical, but often neglected, area of plant management.
What owners like
An unequivocal conclusion is that owner/operators are unanimously satisfied with their data repository and historian software applications. All are essentially using one product that has almost become a de facto standard at power stations. Users also report being very satisfied with their predictive analytics package, which uses intense data-crunching algorithms that predict where problems are likely to occur.
What many users don’t care for, however, are their work and task management programs. One theory to explain this common distaste, validated through two fleet managers, goes like this: Because task management software requires many users to input data, it must impose rigid rules on the process, and those rules frustrate users. By contrast, visualization or analytical software engines pull data from the automation system and present them to the user. As a result, work/task management and visualization/analysis represent two different functions to users because their interfaces are different.
Most other programs don’t generate a strong reaction either way, if owner/operators’ responses are viewed in the aggregate.
The most-cited software challenge, say users, is the friendliness of interfaces. Most power plant software doesn’t measure up in that regard, they add. Another issue, noted by more than one user, is version control, which is “annoying and expensive” because people have to be repeatedly retrained on newer versions. One respondent summed up the problem tersely: “When software is easy to use, it gets used; when it isn’t, it doesn’t.”
Another interesting distinction made by users is between software that does something and software that propagates and presents. For example, predictive analytics, thermal performance monitoring, and process optimization are three generic functions that are implemented in the same way. Data are extracted and put into the application, calculations are performed, a new piece of information is generated, and action may be taken based on it. By contrast, other software packages take data and present/organize them differently or better, and propagate them further, for wider use throughout the organization.
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